Interview: Natalia Figueroa - Killmonday Games

We had the opportunity to speak to Natalia Figueroa, one of the developers at Killmonday, a small and young team of developers with tons of creativity. We talked about their past experience, and of course about their upcoming point-and-click Fran Bow.

Alex: We know that developing games require a lot of resources. What triggered in your mind before forming a team of two without having a large backup other than indiegogo?

Natalia: Well, we have been working many years with very low budget projects, but mostly short films and animations and we weren't afraid of starting doing games because of resources. But while developing Fran Bow we realized that a game really takes much more time than making an animation or a movie because games includes everything we did with movies and much more! So actually now that we got people to backup our project through Indiegogo is very new and a huge dream come true!

Alex: You mention on your website that you used to make short films, animations and music videos. What got you into making these?

Natalia: We both were interested since ages of doing movies so when we meet we decided to start doing our own short films. The love of just creating is what always have been there, it doesn't really matter how you do it, but what you do and sometimes movies or animations or music are the right way of showing different perspectives or feelings. 

Alex: What was the project that made you two feel like the video medium was too restrictive for what you wanted to accomplish?

Natalia: Isak wrote a few pretty awesome scripts and we got the opportunity to do one of them but it felt so bad because we couldn't make it as we wanted, mainly because of money. Later on we wanted also to do a series but this one was very huge and was impossible to us to get the money for it. Other situation was a few years ago, we worked very hard on an animation project. It was a stop motion movie about a girl and her cat. The story was very nice and both loved it, but one day somebody came inside the place where we were working and destroyed all our hard work. Dolls and backgrounds were totally gone. After that we felt failure.

Alex: Would you say that your past experience with Ofokus has made it easier to get Killmonday started?

Natalia: Yes of course, mostly because we already knew each other and we knew that we could work together. The past experiences were mostly failures and that made us very strong and also gave us many positive changes in ourselves.

Alex: It looks like every project has a unique art style to it. What’s the process that goes behind deciding what the right art style for each project is?

Natalia: We could say that is the story or the direction the game takes that makes the decision of the art style. It's almost impossible to predict the art style if you don't have a pretty stable storyline or concept. But it also occurs that with an idea comes a vision, it's a part of the imagination! It's very unpredictable!

Alex: Fran Bow’s art style reminded me of Alice in Wonderland and Beetlejuice a lot. What exactly was the inspiration behind it?

Natalia: The inspiration of Fran Bow comes actually from a long life of many thing! Because is based on Natalia's point of view and what she have seen since she was a little girl. It comes from many old illustration books or movies from the 40's and 50's. The cold and almost fake color of everything. The shapes of the characters are also based mostly on how she did see things when she was younger. Kids are always with big heads and big eyes, almost disfigured.

Alex: Would you say that self-teaching yourselves in order to accomplish what you wanted is one of the hardest things you’ve done in your lives?

Natalia: It's the hardest, funniest and most educational experiences of our life! It comes with many hours of frustrating feelings, hating everything you do until you love it! It also teaches us to not be afraid of our ideas! It teaches everything! It's not only about only doing a game anymore, it's also about preparing your entire life to be in front of a computer and manage to have a healthy life, mentally and physical! And also, we are married and it's pretty hard to disconnect from work and have a relationship!

Alex: Why did you decide to use crowd funding service and how did it feel to successfully have funded Fran Bow?

Natalia: We started doing Fran Bow in our spare time. But with the time the game got more and more advanced! It was a huge world to create and we were feeling really frustrated to the point that we did't even want to work more on the game. But it felt worse to let such a beautiful project behind. We were a bit insecure about the crowd-funding because we haven't done a big game before and we were nowhere in the game industry! But we also thought that it is an opportunity so, why not? When Fran Bow got funded it really was like a dream, it took us a few days to understand it and until today it feels like unbelievable!

Alex: Unlike most point-and-click games Fran Bow seems to have quite a bit of gore in it. Are you worried that this might scared certain people off?

Natalia: We are aware that there will be many that will not play the game because of the gore but we are not worried about it because it's something we decided to go for from the beginning. If the game scares people, well that's kind of cool because it's an horror game and if people don't get scared is also good because the game is not entirely about jump scares, horrors and gore. There is a beautiful story behind and the gore is part of it. It's hard to explain it without playing the game.

Alex: If Indie games hadn’t become as popular as they are today do you think you could have still accomplished what you’ve accomplished so far?

Natalia: Not really, it's because of the growing indie-games era that gives us the opportunity to reach out. If there weren't a huge interest in different games or more personal games then we couldn't have a public for it.

Alex: Was Killmonday the first time you’ve come into contacted with the game industry? Games and what got you into gaming?

Natalia: Yes, Killmonday is the very first step of our contact with the game world! We discovered that making games was giving us experiences that can be very unique and fun! The interaction is one of the points that makes gaming so important to us!

Alex: If you had all the resources you needed at your disposal, what would be your dream game to develop?

Natalia: Oh My god! This is a question that you don't want to know the answer! If we would tell you your brain would melt! But seriously, we have talked about this many times in our day dreaming hours that hopefully you will see in the future!

Alex: Are you planning for any new projects already?

Natalia:Yes but no. We mean that we don't want to think too much about other ideas right now, but yes we have 3 games in queue to be finished! One of them is Penpals that we made for the Ludum Dare in 72 hours, we really felt in love with the story and it would be super if we can finish it!

Alex: Will it be too much to ask for you guys to write something on a piece of paper or a special photo for NoobFeed?

Natalia: Thank you for this interview. Have a nice day!

A big thanks to Natalia for taking the time to talk with us and sending us this special photo! We’re looking forward to see what games you’re going to bring to us in the future.

Keep up with Natalia Figueroa at Killmonday Games and follow her on Twitter!

Cirstoiu Alexandru Constantin, NoobFeed